42,000 roaming bill nearly bankrupts family firm after TikTok use abroad

"A Manchester business owner was left facing a £42,000 mobile phone bill after his daughter streamed TikTok on holiday in Morocco, a charge he said nearly pushed his small company into financial crisis. Andrew Alty, who runs a curtains business, discovered the scale of the bill while on a family trip to Marrakech after receiving an initial £22,000 invoice from O2. A second bill for around £20,000 followed shortly after their return to the UK. The charges stemmed from data roaming outside Europe, where the UK's previous EU-wide free roaming arrangements no longer apply."

"His daughter had spent around eight hours using TikTok during the trip. With no cap in place, data charges mounted rapidly, amounting to more than £5,000 per hour of usage. "There's no way they should be able to charge that," Mr Alty told The Telegraph. "They made no effort to inform us and just allowed the charges to accrue. I don't understand how they expect any small business to pay that sort of bill.""

"Following weeks of complaints, both Currys and O2 agreed to waive the bill in full. According to Ofcom data covering July to September 2025, O2 received among the highest levels of complaints per 100,000 customers, alongside Sky Mobile and Three. Almost a third related to complaints handling. Mr Alty escalated his case to the Financial Ombudsman Service, arguing that the opt-out clause on data caps had not been clearly explained. However, the ombudsman ruled that contract explanations fell under Currys' responsibility, not O2's."

Andrew Alty, who runs a curtains business in Manchester, was hit with a £42,000 mobile bill after his daughter streamed TikTok during a holiday in Marrakech. He received an initial £22,000 invoice from O2 and a subsequent bill for about £20,000 after returning to the UK. The charges arose from data roaming outside Europe, where previous EU-wide free-roaming arrangements no longer apply. The mobile contract was taken out via Currys and included an opt-out of a 'rest-of-world' data cap that Mr Alty said he did not understand. His daughter used TikTok for around eight hours, generating charges exceeding £5,000 per hour. After weeks of complaints, Currys and O2 agreed to waive the bill in full, and the Financial Ombudsman ruled that contract explanations were Currys' responsibility.

Read at Business Matters